Franz Dahlem

Franz Dahlem

Franz Dahlem
Born 14 January 1892
Rohrbach, Lothringen, Germany
Died 17 December 1981
Berlin, East Germany
Occupation Party official and politician
Political party SPD (1913-1917)
USPD (1917-1920)
VKPD (1920-1921)
KPD (1920-1946)
SED (1946-1981)
Spouse(s) Käthe Weber (1899-1974)
Children Luise Dahlem (1919–†1957)<>br>Robert Dahlem (1922-1976)
Parent(s) Jacques Pierre Dahlem
Marie Wagner/Dahlem

Franz Dahlem (14 January 1892 - 17 December 1981) was a leading official of the German Communist Party[1] and, after 1945, of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED). He sat as a Communist member of the German Reichstag between 1928 and 1933.[2]

During the early 1950s he became popular with colleagues in the higher reaches of the SED (party) and was seen by some as a possible rival to the country's leader, Walter Ulbricht: he was stripped of his functions in 1953.[3][4] He was formally rehabilitated in 1956, however.[4]

Life

Provenance and early years

Franz Dahlem was born into a Roman Catholic family[5] in Rohrbach, a small town, then in Germany, in the hills to the southeast of Saarbrücken.[2] His father, Jacques Pierre Dahlem, was a railway worker.[1] After attending middle school in Château-Salins he went on to senior school at Sarreguemines, where his school career was curtailed due to lack of money.[6] He was also a member of the Catholic Youth League at Sarreguemines between 1908 and 1911.[3] He undertook a traineeship as an export salesman in Saarbrücken[3] and / or Cologne[1] between 1911 and 1913. In 1913 he joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party / Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands),[5] remaining a member of it till 1917.[3]

War

Despite his opposition to the war he served in the army between 1914 and 1918.[5] However, when the SPD split in 1917, primarily over the issue of party support for continuing its support for the government line over the war, Dahlem chose the breakaway USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany / Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands).[4] It was also in 1917 that he was wounded while serving on the Eastern Front.[4] After being transferred to Macedonia he developped malaria which led to several periods in hospital.[4]

Revolution

During the post-war year of revolutions Dahlem joined the workers' and soldiers' council, initially in Allenstein (East Prussia) and subsequently in Cologne, participating in support of implementation of the slogan "All power to the councils" ("Alle Macht den Räten!").[1] He also co-founded and became the editor of "Sozialistische Republik", a USPD newspaper in which he powerfully advocated the party's membership of the Comintern and a party merger with the new Communist Party of Germany.[1] He also served, between 1919 and 1923, as a Cologne city councillor.[3]

In 1919 Franz Dahlem married Käthe Weber (1899-1974) who shared in his political beliefs and activism.[7]

Politics in a democracy

In December 1920 Dahlem took part in the "unification party conference" at which the left wing of the USPD merged with the German Communist Party to form what was briefly known as the VKPD (Vereinigte Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands / Unified German Communist Party). Here he was elected to the central committee as a representative of the Middle Rhine region. In 1921 he surrendered his editorship of the "Sozialistische Republik", but during 1921/22 he briefly edited the Berlin-based "Internationalen Presse-Korrespondenz". When the French army occupied the occupied the Ruhr region in January 1923 Dahlem helped to organise "resistance to French and German imperialism". He was sent by the German Communist leadership to Paris in order to coordinate with the French Communists against the common enemy.[1] From 1923 Dahlem was working in the Organisation Department of the Party Central Committee.[3] He was particularly effective in the application of "Leninist principles" to party organisation. In 1927 he himself joined the Central Committee, becoming a member of its Politburo just two years later.[1]

Dahlem also participated in the legislative processes of the newly democratised state, sitting as a Communist member in the Prussian "Landtag" (regional legislative assembly) between 1921 and 1924[4] and as a Communist Member of the national Reichstag (parliament), representing the Potsdam electoral district, between 1928 and 1933.[2]

Recurring fragmentation was a feature of left-wing politics in general and of the German Communist Party in particular during the 1920s. One reason Dahlem was sent to Berlin in 1921 to edit the "Internationalen Presse-Korrespondenz" was to enforce his separation from Central Committee members in his Rhineland home patch at a time when he was opposing the party leadership. Areas of contention included both the party's attitude to the competing factions of Soviet communism during the Russian Civil War and the practical issue of how fast to progress the party's revolutionary objectives following what was seen as the failure of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. After 1923, with Zinoviev sidelined in Moscow and Stalin's control becoming more absolute, there was no longer any question of the German Communists having to choose between competing versions of Soviet communism, and the German Communist Party became more focused domestically. During a further period of internal fragmentation at the end of the 1920s, Dahlem was closely aligned with the strategy of the party leader Ernst Thälmann, which was variously seen either as a determined policy to unite the working class behind the Communist Party in order to resist the rising tide of Naziism or else as an aggressive and sustained assault on the centre-left Social Democratic Party which created a bitter division on the political left through which the Nazis found their path to power.[1][3][4]

It was at Thälmann's suggestion that in November 1930 Dahklem took over the leadership of the Revolutionary Trades Union Oppostion (Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts Opposition).[1][6] He retained this function till he was replaced by Fritz Schulte in June 1932.[6]

Régime change and exile

The Nazis took power in January 1933 and lost little time in converting the German state into a one-party dictatorship. Party political activity (unless in support of the Nazi party) became illegal.[8] The eleventh party conference, attended by the Communist Party leadership, took place on 7 February 1933 at the Sporthaus Ziegenhals, a restaurant in the countryside just outside Berlin on its southern side.[9] Dahlem was one of approximately 40 party leaders who attended.[10] The meeting later achieved iconic status as the last meeting of the German Communist Party until after 1945, and in 1953 the restaurant itself had been taken over and converted into a memorial centre. By that time many of those who had met in February 1933 had been killed or died in concentration camps.

Under instructions from the party leadership, Dahlem himself fled to Paris, together with Wilhelm Pieck und Wilhelm Florin, in May 1933. The French capital quickly became the de facto head quarters of the German Communist Party in exile, and Dahlen's own membership of the Party Central Committee was confirmed in 1935, following internal party ructions during the early 1930s. In 1939 he was back in the party politburo.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Franz Dahlem (1892 – 1981)". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 "Dahlem, Franz". Reichstags-Handbuch, Wahlperiode. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bernd-Rainer Barth; Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Dahlem, Franz * 14.1.1892, † 17.12.1981 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK der SED, Kaderchef der SED". Wer war wer in der DDR?. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 mw. "Franz Dahlem 1892-1981". Lebendiges Museum Online (LeMO). Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin & Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 "Franz Dahlem (14. Januar 1892 - 17. Dezember 1981)". Biografien. Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Bernd-Rainer Barth; Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Dahlem, Franz * 14.1.1892, † 17.12.1981 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK der SED, Kaderchef der SED". Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  7. ↑ Bernd-Rainer Barth. "Dahlem, Käthe geb. Weber * 20.3.1899, † 25.12.1974 DFD-Funktionärin". Wer war wer in der DDR?. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  8. ↑ "Die illegale Tagung des ZK der KPD am 7. Februar 1933". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  9. ↑ "Zur Entstehung und Geschichte der Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstätte in Ziegenhals". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  10. ↑ "Teilnehmer an der Tagung des ZK der KPD am 07. Februar 1933". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
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